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4-The Point News/February 24, 1986
Photos by Julian Van-Holst-Pel lekaan
COMEDIAN-AUTHOR-POLITICAL ACTIVIST DICK GREGORY
Challenging Authority, Still Decrying Apathy in America
By JOSEPH NORRIS
When Dick Gregory spoke, there was anger in his voice.
"Ya’ll got a big job," the author, comedian, political
activist told the packed house at St. Mary’s Hall Tuesday
night. "We older folks done left ya'll a hell of a mess.
You gonna have to solve it or die."
There were many themes which Gregory returned
to time and again when he spoke at St. Mary’s College
last week. Those themes ranged from political to spiritual,
and never once did he lose stride, even when wailing
children interrupted his oratory. He hammered away at the
ills of our world and offered each person there an
alternative to the adopted lifestyles which he says have
helped to erode America’s people.
"If I could only tell you one thing here this evening
it would be for you to drink twelve glasses of water a day,
to clean out your system, to take care of your bodies,"
he said. "And don’t drink this chlorinated water, buy
your water. You buy your coffee and your cigarettes and
those are the two biggest drugs in use in America today,
and if you can spend your money on something that’s going
to kill you, you can spend money and buy water. It
will help you cleanse your bodies of the poisons our
society has helped to put in them. Take care of your
bodies."
Gregory's strength as a comedian is matched only by
fierceness of his message, and the realization is not long
in coming that he uses laughter to set up his listeners
for the deeper, more powerful message within his words.
I t’s almost as if he has taken the old Bob Hope tactic of
the one-liner and refined it to create a broader message
that not only leaves you laughing but leaves you thinking
as well.
He revealed in his own way, the theme that has been
avoided by the press in regards to the recent space
shuttle tragedy, and again, used humor to introduce his
subject and bring forth a stronger point.
"Gravity pull, baby," he exclaimed, challenging the
official accounts of events leading up to the explosion
of the space shuttle Challenger. "When I was a kid, I
jumped off the roof of our garage, and when I woke up
in the hospital and felt the bump on my head, I asked my
mother what happened, and she said, "gravity pull, baby."
So I learned about the force of gravity at a very young
age. Now, did you see the pictures of the space shuttle
when they sent that thing up? The flames didn’t come
down, they travelled up. Now, they hadn’t left the at­mosphere
yet, gravity pull was still in effect, yet,
those flames were travelling up, not down. Now what I
want to know is what was on that thing?
"And what about the pressure that was put on those
people to get that thing up in the air? I mean, doesn't
that bother you? They don't even send those things up
on a cloudy day, and here it was the coldest day in the
history of the state of Florida, 23 degrees, icicles
hanging off the fruit, and they’re blasting off? Doesn’t
that seem funny to you? When Reagan is going to have
The New Frontier in his state of the union address that
evening, talking about the teacher in space? Doesn’t
that mean anything? he asked. "And how much of an
influence did the military have on that launch? Here’s
Houston Control, the space shuttle has just exploded
on national television and the guy down in Houston is
saying, "Obviously, a major malfunction has occured."
That’s the understatement in the history of the universe.
So Houston didn’t know what had happened. My question
is, did the Air Force have some type of override sys­tem
that took control so that Houston couldn’t tell
what was happening? Something ain’t right."
Gregory’s creedence that "information is power" is
coupled with a simple message that with knowledge comes
risks, evidenced by the papers he procured from the
FBI through the Freedom of Information Act that revealed
that he himself was a target during Herbert Hoover’s
tenure there, and as he claimed that both the Kennedy
and Martin Luther King assassinations were sponsored
by the CIA (according to Gregory) and that his access
to this knowledge placed his own life in jeapordy. Yet
his firm belief in ’the God—force that is inside of me"
has sustained him.
"They talk about power, and how military strength
is power. You want to see power? Get up one morning
before dawn and watch the s^un rise up over the horizon
and knock the darkness clean out of the sky and not make
a sound. That's power!"
Another astonishing revelation by the political acti­vist,
who has authored nine books, was that Korean flight
KAL 007, which was shot down by the Soviets for violating
Soviet air space in 1983, was a planned attempt by the
CIA to spy on the U.S.S.R.
How many of you know that Richard Nixon was on that
plane? Former president Richard Nixon was on flight KAL
007 and somebody got on that plane and told him to get
off. Now you tell me. I notice they didn’t tell Congress­man
McDaniel to get off I" he said.
Gregory portrayed the Reagan administration as catering
to the super rich while ignoring the needs of the under­privileged
in America.
When they shot down that jet liner, what did Reagan
do? He came out and said, w e’re gonna boycott Russian
vodka! I noticed that they didn’t boycott Russian caviar!"
In some ways, Gregory’s claims bordered on fantastic.
At the press conference following his lecture, Gregory
disclosed that the Kennedy assassination in Dallas in 1963
was botched by the CIA. "Kennedy died in April of 1971,"
he claimed. "He was a vegetable as a result of the shoot­ing.
The whole third floor of Providence Hospital was off
limits for three years after he was shot. And I feel sorry
for that wino they knocked over the head and buried in his
See DICK GREGORY, page 5

4-The Point News/February 24, 1986
Photos by Julian Van-Holst-Pel lekaan
COMEDIAN-AUTHOR-POLITICAL ACTIVIST DICK GREGORY
Challenging Authority, Still Decrying Apathy in America
By JOSEPH NORRIS
When Dick Gregory spoke, there was anger in his voice.
"Ya’ll got a big job," the author, comedian, political
activist told the packed house at St. Mary’s Hall Tuesday
night. "We older folks done left ya'll a hell of a mess.
You gonna have to solve it or die."
There were many themes which Gregory returned
to time and again when he spoke at St. Mary’s College
last week. Those themes ranged from political to spiritual,
and never once did he lose stride, even when wailing
children interrupted his oratory. He hammered away at the
ills of our world and offered each person there an
alternative to the adopted lifestyles which he says have
helped to erode America’s people.
"If I could only tell you one thing here this evening
it would be for you to drink twelve glasses of water a day,
to clean out your system, to take care of your bodies,"
he said. "And don’t drink this chlorinated water, buy
your water. You buy your coffee and your cigarettes and
those are the two biggest drugs in use in America today,
and if you can spend your money on something that’s going
to kill you, you can spend money and buy water. It
will help you cleanse your bodies of the poisons our
society has helped to put in them. Take care of your
bodies."
Gregory's strength as a comedian is matched only by
fierceness of his message, and the realization is not long
in coming that he uses laughter to set up his listeners
for the deeper, more powerful message within his words.
I t’s almost as if he has taken the old Bob Hope tactic of
the one-liner and refined it to create a broader message
that not only leaves you laughing but leaves you thinking
as well.
He revealed in his own way, the theme that has been
avoided by the press in regards to the recent space
shuttle tragedy, and again, used humor to introduce his
subject and bring forth a stronger point.
"Gravity pull, baby," he exclaimed, challenging the
official accounts of events leading up to the explosion
of the space shuttle Challenger. "When I was a kid, I
jumped off the roof of our garage, and when I woke up
in the hospital and felt the bump on my head, I asked my
mother what happened, and she said, "gravity pull, baby."
So I learned about the force of gravity at a very young
age. Now, did you see the pictures of the space shuttle
when they sent that thing up? The flames didn’t come
down, they travelled up. Now, they hadn’t left the at­mosphere
yet, gravity pull was still in effect, yet,
those flames were travelling up, not down. Now what I
want to know is what was on that thing?
"And what about the pressure that was put on those
people to get that thing up in the air? I mean, doesn't
that bother you? They don't even send those things up
on a cloudy day, and here it was the coldest day in the
history of the state of Florida, 23 degrees, icicles
hanging off the fruit, and they’re blasting off? Doesn’t
that seem funny to you? When Reagan is going to have
The New Frontier in his state of the union address that
evening, talking about the teacher in space? Doesn’t
that mean anything? he asked. "And how much of an
influence did the military have on that launch? Here’s
Houston Control, the space shuttle has just exploded
on national television and the guy down in Houston is
saying, "Obviously, a major malfunction has occured."
That’s the understatement in the history of the universe.
So Houston didn’t know what had happened. My question
is, did the Air Force have some type of override sys­tem
that took control so that Houston couldn’t tell
what was happening? Something ain’t right."
Gregory’s creedence that "information is power" is
coupled with a simple message that with knowledge comes
risks, evidenced by the papers he procured from the
FBI through the Freedom of Information Act that revealed
that he himself was a target during Herbert Hoover’s
tenure there, and as he claimed that both the Kennedy
and Martin Luther King assassinations were sponsored
by the CIA (according to Gregory) and that his access
to this knowledge placed his own life in jeapordy. Yet
his firm belief in ’the God—force that is inside of me"
has sustained him.
"They talk about power, and how military strength
is power. You want to see power? Get up one morning
before dawn and watch the s^un rise up over the horizon
and knock the darkness clean out of the sky and not make
a sound. That's power!"
Another astonishing revelation by the political acti­vist,
who has authored nine books, was that Korean flight
KAL 007, which was shot down by the Soviets for violating
Soviet air space in 1983, was a planned attempt by the
CIA to spy on the U.S.S.R.
How many of you know that Richard Nixon was on that
plane? Former president Richard Nixon was on flight KAL
007 and somebody got on that plane and told him to get
off. Now you tell me. I notice they didn’t tell Congress­man
McDaniel to get off I" he said.
Gregory portrayed the Reagan administration as catering
to the super rich while ignoring the needs of the under­privileged
in America.
When they shot down that jet liner, what did Reagan
do? He came out and said, w e’re gonna boycott Russian
vodka! I noticed that they didn’t boycott Russian caviar!"
In some ways, Gregory’s claims bordered on fantastic.
At the press conference following his lecture, Gregory
disclosed that the Kennedy assassination in Dallas in 1963
was botched by the CIA. "Kennedy died in April of 1971,"
he claimed. "He was a vegetable as a result of the shoot­ing.
The whole third floor of Providence Hospital was off
limits for three years after he was shot. And I feel sorry
for that wino they knocked over the head and buried in his
See DICK GREGORY, page 5